It's funny how a high school style reflection on the world (with the same irrelevant namedropping, vague thesis and utter lack of empirical verification) becomes a NYT-worthy article when the style of writing is replaced with academic-speak and its author has a PhD.

Every time I see an article like this I wonder how a philosopher would feel if, say, an economist starts opining about philosophy of science in the New York Times. Why is it that every individual in the society thinks he is perfectly qualified to talk about economic systems?

This would be a perfectly fine reflection if it didn't drop terms like capitalism and markets around. It drives me nuts when liberal arts majors start talking about markets as personal entities, and capitalism as a way of life.

OP good. This annoys me to no end.
This would be a perfectly fine reflection if it didn't drop terms like capitalism and markets around. It drives me nuts when liberal arts majors start talking about markets as personal entities, and capitalism as a way of life.

There is no doubt that, to some extent, people have adapted to capitalism as a way of life, or have treated markets as personal entities. The problem is when scholars regard them as the only characteristic of markets and capitalism - often out of a lack of interest for the more specific details of how these systems work.

Well, if you want to be able to actually put these people back on their heels rather than calling them idiots or ignoring them, pick out the weakest assumptions in their argument and smash them:

"The system works at least as well if a product sells not because it is a genuine contribution to human well-being but because people are falsely persuaded that they should have it."

False Consciousness doesn't work. People aren't stupid. Thinking critically about capitalism doesn't make them any more enlightened than thinking critically about fashion, which the author would disagree with. Seven billion people in the world are convinced of a giant systematic lie propagated by a select few super rich? Right.

"Often, in fact, it’s easier to persuade people to buy something that’s inferior than it is to make something that’s superior."

That's an empirical question -- is it cheaper to make commercials that say the car you're selling is great than it is to design a great car? Car commercials don't work very well when no one trusts your brand, because you've been spending all your money on top notch advertising and selling people s**t that breaks.

The trouble, generally, in the humanities is that there is an elaborate system of ideas whose thesis is that modern society and capitalism boil down to an ideology . . . an ideology that is bad for people and can be seen through with enough "critical theory." Critical theory itself is an ideology, though. And atoning its sacraments in essays doesn't make students any more capable of measuring facts and thinking critically than does making them draw supply and demand graphs by rote and repeat mantras about consumer sovereignty.

We'd all be a lot smarter if we listened to the other side of a debate long enough to understand its motivations and premises, and *then* proceeded to take down stupid things people believe.

Did you want to argue that Boudreaux's explication of basic and widely-accepted-among-economists arguments about the government being bad at picking winners, the impact of relative wage rates on geographic sector mix, and the information-acquisition costs attending to the estimation of demand functions is wrong?

Or did you just want to accuse the New York times and one of several hundred externally, private-foundation-funded research institutes on an American campus of a corrupt conspiracy, in an attempt to compensate for your own insecurities?

I agree, if persuading them mattered. Thing is, critical theorists are not going to be running the world anytime soon. Better focus on making the world a better place and leave them alone with their rants.

Well, if you want to be able to actually put these people back on their heels rather than calling them idiots or ignoring them, pick out the weakest assumptions in their argument and smash them:
"The system works at least as well if a product sells not because it is a genuine contribution to human well-being but because people are falsely persuaded that they should have it."
False Consciousness doesn't work. People aren't stupid. Thinking critically about capitalism doesn't make them any more enlightened than thinking critically about fashion, which the author would disagree with. Seven billion people in the world are convinced of a giant systematic lie propagated by a select few super rich? Right.
"Often, in fact, it�s easier to persuade people to buy something that�s inferior than it is to make something that�s superior."
That's an empirical question -- is it cheaper to make commercials that say the car you're selling is great than it is to design a great car? Car commercials don't work very well when no one trusts your brand, because you've been spending all your money on top notch advertising and selling people s**t that breaks.
The trouble, generally, in the humanities is that there is an elaborate system of ideas whose thesis is that modern society and capitalism boil down to an ideology . . . an ideology that is bad for people and can be seen through with enough "critical theory." Critical theory itself is an ideology, though. And atoning its sacraments in essays doesn't make students any more capable of measuring facts and thinking critically than does making them draw supply and demand graphs by rote and repeat mantras about consumer sovereignty.
We'd all be a lot smarter if we listened to the other side of a debate long enough to understand its motivations and premises, and *then* proceeded to take down stupid things people believe.

I agree, if persuading them mattered. Thing is, critical theorists are not going to be running the world anytime soon. Better focus on making the world a better place and leave them alone with their rants.

And I sympathize with that view if it were true that they were alone -- but the state of the economic logic of the average man in the street would indicate that the humanities and other social sciences have been much more persuasive than us. That's a problem.

I mean, if you believe demand curves slope downward, and that making a nice world for everyone to live in isn't as simple as educating a selection of benevolent dictators correctly, then the competition between Marxian and economic explanations of phenomena should matter a great deal.

I agree, if persuading them mattered. Thing is, critical theorists are not going to be running the world anytime soon. Better focus on making the world a better place and leave them alone with their rants.
And I sympathize with that view if it were true that they were alone -- but the state of the economic logic of the average man in the street would indicate that the humanities and other social sciences have been much more persuasive than us. That's a problem.

I am sick and tired of libtards. These people think that riding the world of poverty and pay a "decent" salary to everyone in the world is something that can be easily achieved by passing laws.

It's unbearably annoying, I agree. But we have to live with these people. And arguing with them over wage floors has gotten us . . . nowhere hasn't it? We need to find a new approach, and explaining how technology creates economic growth, and that economic growth raises all ships, brings the debate to entirely new ethical territory, where we can't be accused of not caring about the poor.